


Cassilda's Bitter Cry

by Kiko_Murda



Category: The King in Yellow - Robert W. Chambers, True Detective
Genre: Case Fic, Child Murder, F/M, Familicide, Gen, Graphic Description of Corpses, Hallucinogen Persistance Perception Disorder, Horror, No Beta we walk hand in hand into extinction like Rust intended, Past Drug Use, Rust Is His Own Content Warning, Synesthesia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-14
Updated: 2020-01-01
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:27:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21794554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kiko_Murda/pseuds/Kiko_Murda
Summary: Rust leans forward, catching downcast eyes with his own. “It’s alright,” he murmurs, soft and blameless. “You ain’t in any trouble here. What d’you remember? What did he say?”She swallows hard enough that he can hear her throat click from across the table. She’s afraid, genuinely afraid, so he knows he’s onto something. “Just-just the same thing. Over and over. ‘Have you found the Yellow Sign?’”A case fic set just before it all went to hell in 2002 because the author reread The King In Yellow and saw an opportunity.***On Hiatus***
Relationships: Maggie Hart/Martin "Marty" Hart, Rustin "Rust" Cohle & Martin "Marty" Hart, Rustin "Rust" Cohle/Laurie Spencer
Comments: 22
Kudos: 15





	1. Death, Have Mercy

**Act 1, Scene 2**

Camilla: You, sir, should unmask.

Stranger: Indeed?

Cassilda: Indeed, it's time. We all have laid aside disguise but you.

Stranger: I wear no mask.

Camilla: _(Terrified, aside to Cassilda)_ No mask? No mask!

* * *

Rust has made a habit of showing up at headquarters at the ass crack of dawn. Way back when, rumor around the office was that he slept in the file room. Marty had been inclined to believe it until he’d spent those few weeks living with the man. Turns out the rumor mill had been half right. Rust _has_ been known to spend the night in the file room on several occasions, but the crazy son of a bitch sure ain’t sleeping in there. On the rare day Rust does sleep, he is an obscenely early riser.

This is all to say that, by the time Marty rolls in, the red truck is already in the lot and, judging by the square of dry asphalt beneath it, has been there before the rain ever started last night. The man himself sits hunched over at his desk, transferring case notes from his ledger to an official report. Marty swings by to drape his damp jacket over his chair and gets a distracted grunt from Rust while he’s at it.

A glance at the page he’s working from shows Rust is still trying to get blood from the stone that is the Mater Dei mess. A murder with no body, no real witnesses, and no crime scene to speak of. Marty is pretty sure it’s punishment detail but he doesn’t think they’ve done anything to Leroy, lately. The only reason they haven’t passed it off yet is Rust’s compulsive refusal to hand off a case before he’s had it forty-eight hours. The time limit is a compromise. Considering how hard-won it was, Marty has to imagine Rust ran roughshod over every one of his previous partners. It’s hardly a wonder they shipped his stubborn ass to Louisiana.

For a moment, he watches Rust work and smoke with the same intensity he does everything else. Like he’s holding auditions for ways to kill himself. With the cut of his cheekbones lately, it looks like starvation made the shortlist. Marty snags a pastry in the breakroom when he goes to get his coffee. He’d like to avoid having his partner keel over onto a DB. That sort of thing upsets the crime scene techs.

On the way back, he slides it under Rust’s arm unnoticed and settles in for the day. Marty sips his coffee in peace as Rust picks absently at the danish between the back and forth from notebook to computer. As mornings go, this one is pretty good. Marty is almost ready for his second cup of coffee before Rust’s bitch switch flips on.

“If you weren’t gonna do a lick of work, what’d you come in for?” Rust hasn’t looked up from the cramped lettering he’s transcribing.

Marty smirks with the serenity of a man up to date on his paperwork. “Reckon it was to enjoy having all my reports in.”

Rust raises his eyes to smart off but gets distracted by the danish before he can properly look at Marty. He gives it a slow blink, the way he does when he’s trying to separate reality from… whatever else he’s seeing at any given time. He frowns at the pastry like he’s never seen one before. Or like he’s not sure this one is real. Marty manages to keep a straight face, but, Lord, it gets real close. “Could be I wanted to get a load of you doin’ paperwork,” he continues, as Rust narrows his eyes at the danish, and really, it’s the little things in life. “Figured the major would have to waterboard you first.”

It appears Rust has decided it’s a genuine baked good, though he still looks suspicious. “Who says he didn’t?”

Marty is about to say something about torture not working on Rust when Salter strides out of his office, a sheet of paper in hand. “Hart. Cohle. You’re up. Got a real messy one in St. Martin with your names on it. Out Breaux Bridge way.”

Rust stands slow and easy, taking his mysterious breakfast with him. Marty can see he’s trying not to look over-eager to abandon his desk, and he's sure it works on everybody but him. He feels a little spark of pride that _he_ can read the unreadable Rustin Cohle, and lets it carry him to the major’s office to collect their assignment.

The briefing is, well, brief and once Rust snags the keys, they’re on their way to Gecko. Marty likes to watch the Bayou when Rust drives. As a boy, he’d always thought the bright pink spoonbills were Louisiana’s answer to Florida’s flamingos. He likes all the shades of green, from the grasses to the gators to the algae to the trees. The Bayou is beautiful. Of course, Marty’s heard Rust lecture about “dark, stagnant water” and “a choking verdance that rots even as it grows.” So, he’s not going to make the mistake of sharing his opinion out loud. You’ve got to pick your battles with Rust. If you leave it up to him, he’ll pick ‘em all.

“Sounds like a bad one,” Marty says, mostly for something to say.

Rust flashes him a look then pops another piece of danish into his mouth. “Some days, I can’t hardly believe you ever made detective.” There’s no real bite to it, so Marty doesn’t bother getting offended. Besides, every time he catches a glimpse of Rust’s half-finished breakfast, he has to fight back a bout of laughter. That shit’s comedy gold. “And ‘bad’ is objectively meaningless in our line of work.”

“With conversation skills like yours, thank God you’re pretty.”

“Laurie seems to like my sparkling wit just fine.” He turns his attention back to the road. “This ain’t right. Where the fuck are we?”

“I- yeah. Let me check the atlas.” The new, high falutin’ GPS the state had sprung for wasn’t good for much out here in the sticks. It takes a few minutes to right their course, but they manage.

They arrive a bit later than anticipated, but it's not like the crime scene is going anywhere. Blue and red lights are strobing a plain looking house as they duck under the tape. “State Detectives, Cohle and Hart,” Rust tells the officer that approaches them. She looks a bit shocky around the eyes, which tells Marty about everything he needs to know about the state of the crime scene. “Glad you’re here.” She hands a set of plastic shoe covers to each of them. “You’ll be wantin’ to put those on when you get in there. The front hall is...well, you’ll see it.”

Marty takes them and follows after her to the door. “What’re we looking at?”

“The unit’s been through already, so you’re all clear, detectives. The ME's not here, yet, but should be any time now.

"The house is owned by a Lydia Murphy. Got five bodies. One of them’s hers. One adult male we’re still waiting to ID, but the good money is on her boyfriend, Raymond Thorpe.” She takes a steadying breath. “And the three children. Six year old twin boys from her first marriage. And the baby she had with Thorpe. Fifteen months.”

“Jesus Christ,” Marty grunts with a grimace.

“Jesus ain’t here,” Rust mutters low, for Marty’s ears. “We’ll have to save ourselves.”

“Then we’re damned,” Marty fires right back. It gets a rare smile out of Rust.

“‘S what I’ve been telling you for seven years, man.”

Then they’re through the door and on the scene. There’s a body splayed out not ten feet from them. Bled out, if the wide, dark halo soaking into the carpet around it is anything to go by. Marty’s pretty sure this is the adult male, but the corpse is ravaged, face and chest almost completely destroyed. He’s basing the ID on the fact that it’s taller and broader than he expects a woman to be.

Rust is all restrained energy beside him, like a horse under rein, as he glances under his lashes at Marty for the go-ahead. He sets Rust loose with a nod. Marty turns to the sergeant. “The other four?”

“Upstairs, all in bed.” He leaves Rust tugging on his boot covers and trails after her. The first bedroom is pure nightmare fuel. It’s a pink nursery. The only thing that gets him through the doorframe is the knowledge that his job is to get the sick fuck that did this.

If he keeps his eyes away from the wall the crib is pushed against, nothing seems out of place. There’s a rocker for nursing. A shelf full of books with thick cardboard pages. A closet held ajar with a stray, tiny sneaker. All cared for and specially chosen for one well-loved little baby.

He moves toward the crib, sees the blood spattering wall and doesn’t have to look to know what he’ll see. He looks anyways. It’s his job.

The next room is awful, too. It’s the twins' bedroom. Fuck, it’s bad shit and Rust might be right about Louisiana being an annex of hell. Again, no sign of struggle. Just two little boys huddled like puppies in one bed, the other unmade and empty. Sweet, blameless things gone to sleep, never to wake up. Both headshot, like the other room.

The master bedroom is the same. Lydia in bed, shot in the temple as she slept. Could be their killer thinks he’s the merciful sort, do ‘em all fast and painless, asleep so they’d never have to be afraid. Marty knows this kind of man, though, and he’s a coward. He did it like this so he didn’t have to look them in the eyes. So he didn’t have to risk a struggle.

By this time, Rust has caught back up with him and Sergeant Fontane. “Whatchu think?”

He tucks his pencil behind an ear. “I think someone really hated that SOB downstairs,” Rust responds, eyeing the knick-knacks on the dresser. “Family annihilator,” he adds. It's so matter of fact that it takes Marty a second to realize he's not talking about the corpse.

“How’s that?”

“Three bedrooms, five bodies, five people in the family portrait downstairs- excluding the man. One’s missin’,” Rust says, dry as Texas asphalt. “Reckon the one downstairs wasn’t supposed to be here. Was a bonus.”

The sergeant is listening to them carefully, eyes flicking from Rust's ledger to Marty's casual stance. He wonders which of them Fontane pegs as the college graduate. Who she reckons is the backwoods, high school educated hayseed. He hasn't met a cop who's gotten it right, yet.

The medical examiner is waiting outside when they finish. They give orders to the sergeant though she seems to have it well in hand, with a canvas half organized and an area search for the weapons in progress. So they find a gas station to top up at as they organize their thoughts. Rust radios for anything on Lydia Murphy’s ex-husband while Marty heads inside to pay.

“We gotta go to Crowley,” Rust declares before Marty can even get back in the driver’s seat. After a morning spent hip deep in the Amityville Horror, Marty is _not interested_ in Rust’s shit.

He throws Rust the nastiest look he can manage, but Rust ignores it. “What the fuck for?” he demands, resettling his sunglasses and starting the car. “We only just set up a canvas, here!”

Rust shrugs. “Sergeant Fontane is competent. She’ll handle it. Dispatch got back while you were inside. The surviving son, Billy, hasn’t shown up in school for a few days and Murphy’s ex, Roger Fox has not been located by the local PD in Turkey Creek as yet. Lydia’s a transplant. Her nearest family is in Colorado, so the Troopers there will handle that interview. Until Thorpe’s ID is confirmed there’s no one to talk to, unless you want to join the general canvas.”

Marty has half a mind to say that he does, just for spite.

“All we can do is run down paper ‘til such time as something decides to break. Meantime, we did get a break somewhere else,” Rust continues. “Seems like the Acadia Sheriff’s Office figured out they have one of our witnesses. The church case. Mater Dei.”

“What?” The only real lead they have is four frantic 911 calls. The lab is running on the little that could be gotten from what Marty will generously call a crime scene, but he isn’t holding his breath. “There are no witnesses. There’s barely a case.”

“Looks like there is a witness, now. Could be that we talk to her, we’ll even get a case. They’re stalling her until we get there. I told them we'd make it in twenty.”

“Crowley is forty minutes away,” Marty tells him, throwing the car into gear.

Rust pulls the siren out of the glove box. “Then you’d better start driving.”

*******

Twenty-five minutes later, Rust is sitting across from Maya Davis. Marty holds up the wall on his left, guarding the door as usual. Rust never can decide if this is to keep everyone else out as he works the box or to keep Rust in until he gets what they need. Regardless, the slope of Marty’s shoulders implies that he can lean there all day and, as a matter of fact, he has no plans for the evening.

Miss Davis begrudgingly explains the events of two nights ago from her point of view for the second time. She’d spent the better part of an hour with the morons in Parish before anyone cottoned on that she was witness to a case they'd sent to State. The stupid mother fuckers hadn't even tried to take a statement. Rust's tolerance for incompetence isn't high on a good day. Three dead children before lunch is not a good day. He'd made no secret of his opinion on the situation, the deputy, and the detectives responsible for mishandling his fucking witness.

Which resulted in Marty imposing a ban on speech to law enforcement for the next month. Judging by his expression at the time of the pronouncement, he intends to enforce it. And Rust _knows_ he’s going to sit through at least thirty minutes of interdepartmental kumbaya from Leroy when they get back to Lafayette.

But she’s here speaking to Rust now, despite the Acadia Sheriff’s Office best efforts. And near as Rust can tell, every word she speaks is the truth. Which makes no fuckin’ sense. He can feel a muscle in his cheek jump as he tries to keep from working his jaw. His whole mouth feels gritty and metallic, like he’s been chewing on tinfoil seasoned with dirt.

“Miss Davis,” he says, rolling the words off his tongue like they’ll take the sensation with them. “You’re sure this all happened at Mater Dei?” She draws a breath to defend herself, but Rust pushes on, prodding but void of any real curiosity. “Only, that church has been empty two or three years now. Can’t imagine there was much bible studyin’ for y’all to get up to there.”

Young Miss Davis draws herself up, the beads at the ends of her cornrows cascading over her cheekbones. The clear plastic of them swells diabetically sweet behind his teeth. Her indignation spreads citrine and syrupy in the air as she searches his face for something and comes away disappointed. “You don’t believe me.”

“I do. Reckon I got to, what with you coming forward and the 911 calls. But we don’t have a body. And every record I’ve checked says that Mater Dei was left to rot and no caretaker was set over the place.”

“He’s there,” she insists. “Or was there. I seen him before. Never got a good look, though.” She looks disgusted by her recollection. “I wish I still hadn’t. But he was there. Beau went after him after they exchanged words. Beau shot him and he was sure as shit dead when I checked. Half his face blown off. Smelled like he _been_ dead, to be honest.” She gags the last few words.

“There was no blood at the scene,” Marty tells her, voice tapping light and familiar in the small of Rust’s back. “No kinda anything to suggest violence, besides the shell casing.”

She chews her lip, but her eyes harden. She knows what she saw, evidence be damned. Rust has to respect her confidence in her own senses. “Miss Davis,” he murmurs, shifting a bit to the left to regain her attention from where it had drifted. “What did the watchman say to mister,” he pauses to consult his notes, “Francis Beaumont?”

Here, her resolve falters. She starts shaking her head in denial even as she opens her mouth to speak. “I couldn’t really...make it out at the time. Or, I dunno, I forgot it and remembered later. But it doesn’t make no sense, ‘cause why would Beau shoot him if-?”

Rust leans forward, catching her downcast eyes with his own. “It’s alright,” he murmurs, soft and blameless, the same tone he used to talk his pops down on his worst days, once upon a time. “You ain’t in any trouble here. What d’you remember? What did he say to Beau?”

She swallows hard enough that he can hear her throat click from across the table. She’s afraid, genuinely afraid, so he knows he’s onto something. “Just-just the same thing. Over and over. ‘Have you found the Yellow Sign?’”

The synesthetic 'gift' of his cross-wired synapses is seldom anything of the kind. Rust feels her words like sandpaper, rubbing at his throat and wrists. He doesn't look for rope burn on the tender insides of his forearms, but it's close. He can’t stop himself from running his tongue over his teeth and cheeks, though. He chases the unpleasant taste down to his gums as he realizes what his subconscious has been doing this whole goddamn time _._

_Ash. Aluminum. The fucking noosphere._

And, because Marty always watches Rust instead of whoever’s being questioned for some inexplicable reason, he steps in right as Rust’s mind tries to throw an axel. “What’s he look like, this watchman?” Marty is the only person in the parish who can tell he's rattled, but he feels exposed all the same.

The deep coffee of her gaze starts to warp. She looks away to focus on Marty and he’s grateful for being spared from having to choose. He's certain he doesn’t want to see whatever his drug-addled mind wants to inflict on him right now. But he doesn’t dare close his eyes lest he see a pink nursery (pink, not green. Not _hers._ ) “I told you, I didn’t get a good look at him. Not until after-” She stops, breath stuttering and queasy.

“I know,” Marty commiserates, pushing off the wall. His voice still taps at Rust’s lumbar and he wants to rip off his skin. Instead, he vacates his seat and walks toward the glass, ignoring Marty’s furrowed brow and the gaping hole in reality that has opened up beside him. “It’s tough to look at stuff like that. We don’t need any kind of sketch artist portrait, just want something to go on. As it stands, we wouldn’t know our watchman if we had him sitting in the morgue right now.”

“White guy,” Miss Davis proffers after a moment, which they already know, but at least she’s talking again. “Big. Taller ‘n him.” Rust doesn’t turn around, but he can see her gesturing toward him in the window’s reflection. “Broader than you.” She pauses, and another hole blooms in the empty air. “Uh, a lot of ink. B- beard. I dunno what color ‘cause of all the...everything looked red,” she whispers.

Marty hums and sits down in Rust’s vacated seat. “What about his tattoos?” His expression is all sweet golden retriever, a look Rust has never seen him direct at anyone but Maggie and cagey witnesses.

Miss Davis curls a lip in distaste. “Looked like prison tats on his neck,” she says. “Big white guy like that? Pro’lly some Nazi shit.”

Rust turns back to the conversation, fingers falling away from his carotid. Aluminum plated grit is collecting in his throat and he needs this interview to be over. _Now._ “Yeah,” he agrees, measured, _controlled_. “Probably. Anything else you think we ought to know?” At the sharp shake of her head, he leans over and twists the doorknob. “Thank you for your time, Miss Davis. You’ve been very helpful. Appreciate you speaking with us.”

She tosses her braids as she rises, eyes sliding from him to Marty and back. “I just don’t want any of this to come back on me.”

“We’ll see that it doesn’t,” he assures her as he waves her out. He and Marty watch her in silence until she’s on the other side of the receptionist’s counter. His mouth still tastes like the inside of one of his own ashtrays until he focuses elsewhere.

“Hey, Rust?”

“Hmm?” He doesn't look away from the black holes constellating his vision. They taste like brine, which is a marked improvement. They drift slow and aimless, warping the world around them like suspended lenses. They coalesce. They divide. He can almost pinpoint each event horizon. He has a reckless impulse to touch one. To see if he'll freeze in time or fall through forever.

“What the fuck was that about?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from the inestimable Vera Hall, who is a Real Deal Blues Queen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGwYD31dweo
> 
> Epigraph taken from “The Mask” by Robert Chambers


	2. At The Crossroads A Second Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marty is just overreacting. Rust is _fine._

“I’m fine,” Rust repeats, lighting another cigarette. He’s got two left from the pack he opened this morning and it’s barely noon. Laurie’s going to refuse to kiss him until he goes through an entire tube of toothpaste. He rolls down the window and lets it pull the smoke away. The smell is starting to turn his stomach even as the nicotine tries to take the edge off the thump in his temples.

“The hell you are! You had us haul ass getting here from the ass-end of St. Martin. Then you went and made that deputy cry; all so you could talk to the only witness for Mater Dei we’ve got. Then you just about throw her out of the room twenty minutes into the interview. Does that sound fine to you?”

Marty is holding onto the steering wheel tight enough to make it creak. A black mote starts spreading from the odometer and Rust has to look away. “We got what we needed.”

“We didn’t get anything, Rust. What the fuck is going on?” Behind all the bluster, Marty’s tone is plaintive and concerned and one hundred percent sincere. “You were seeing somethin’. Shit, man. Are you using again?” And that might be the funniest thing Rust’s heard all year. Half the time, Rust’s more than pretty sure Marty doesn’t particularly like him. Yet here he is, ready to stage an intervention. The capacity of the human-animal to bond against its own will staggers him, sometimes.

Rust huffs smoke out between his teeth and tugs up his sleeve to expose the inside of his elbow. “I’m clean. Happy?”

“Like I ain’t seen the scars between your fingers,” Marty snorts. “I’ll never know how Maggie misses ‘em. She thinks you’re tellin’ jokes about missing the good drugs.”

Rust knows exactly how. “People only see what they know to look for.”

“You think a nurse don’t know where to look for track marks?” Marty sounds offended as if Maggie isn't more than capable of defending herself from Rust.

“Reckon a wife don’t think to look for ‘em on her husband’s partner. ‘Less you’ve made a career of partnering burnouts.”

“The Junkie Whisperer.” Marty snorts. “Nah. If the state did that to me more than once, I’d be in Angola for murder.” They drive in silence for several minutes. Rust is starting to believe that’s the end of it and he’ll be allowed to go mad in privacy when Marty goes and ruins it. “What were you seeing?” God-fucking-dammit.

“Really ? Are you serious?”

“Yes, Rust, I am. Believe it or not, I have a vested interest in your state of mind since the government has seen fit to let you carry a weapon for whatever fucking reason. Jesus Christ.”

He really wishes Marty would knock it off with the strident badgering. The migraine that’s been building behind his eyes since Gecko is fucking around with his synesthesia. The result is a unique and exciting form of sound based torture. “I’m touched,” Rust murmurs, flicking his butt out the window. He contemplates possible answers and settles on the truth sans details. “Vortices.”

“Vortices,” Marty repeats, voice flat.

“Mmm. And auditory-tactile synesthesia.”

Marty heaves an enormous sigh, as though this is the greatest suffering he’s ever known. “Right. You gonna explain any of that?”

“Hadn’t planned on it.” He pulls the last two cigarettes from the box, lights them and passes one to Marty. “It was a bad one, back there,” he concedes. Marty likes to feel like he’s won something and letting him have a victory is one of the easiest ways to put him off. “But the flashbacks don’t occur often and not that way." Rust averts his eyes from the undulating windshield. "Intense, like.” He takes a long draw, savoring the sting in his throat. The taste of tobacco smoke starts to overwhelm brine if he keeps his eyes shut. “The synesthesia is a sensitivity, not a hallucination.” He sees a tiny shoe poking out of a closet and his eyes snap open. Salt floods his mouth again and he almost gags, but he welcomes it.

“That’s what you’ve been telling me, yeah,” Marty hedges. “Except you have a tendency to lie by omission. Now you’re feeling sounds on top of tasting colors. It makes it sound like you’re conducting interviews with a head full of acid. Auditory-tactile,” he scoffs. “Fuck you and the thesaurus you rode in on.”

Rust flips him the bird. “I’ve always ‘felt sounds.’ It’s never been relevant before.”

Marty flips it right back. “You just proved my point.”

“The fact that lies are a necessary part of life tells you something about the character of existence."

“What it tells me is that you somehow think you still got shit to hide from me.”

“There's always something to hide," Rust tells him, though he shouldn't have to. Every cop knows that. "Maybe I’m a private person.”

“You are that. But if you haven’t noticed, there ain’t much room for privacy here.” Marty gestures between the two of them with the hand holding the cigarette. “So, vortices.”

It takes some maneuvering but Rust manages to get through the rest of the trip with minimal personal invasion. Though he does end up having to distract Marty with an explanation of the way Rust experiences his voice. ‘Throw him something shiny’ is another key Martin Hart Management Technique. Marty is predictably delighted with the revelation. Rust can’t say he gets off cheap (he knows he’s never going to hear the end of it,) but he still does get away with most of his dignity intact. It’s all about acceptable losses.

As anticipated, he and Marty get hauled into Salter’s office shortly after their return. Somewhere around the two-minute mark, the major’s face has gone so red that Rust has actually become concerned that he's going to stroke out. Fortunately, he doesn’t get to do himself in before they are loudly and persistently interrupted by the fire alarm. A lucky escape for janitorial, since arterial spray on the ceiling is a bitch to clean up. Marty has that Hannibal Smith look on his face as they're dismissed on account of klaxon interference. Rust will never understand how he beats anyone at cards. But Rust knows to take a cue when he’s given one and disappears for a while into records to see what he can find on Francis Beaumont.

Not much, it turns out. The kid is clean. No violent priors. Just a marijuana charge that was ultimately dropped by the DA and an arrest for loitering, of all fucking things. He’s not registered as owning any guns, which doesn’t surprise Rust. On paper, Beaumont doesn’t seem the type to have much need for a handgun. Which begs the question of why he was carrying one at all.

He has a whole lot of nothing to show for his research but it feels substantial. Rather than keep digging, and judging that it’s probably safe, Rust resurfaces to find Leroy back in his office and Marty on the phone.

Without ever quite thinking about it, he goes and gets the evidence keys from Favre. After a moment's hesitation at the door, he slips into the evidence locker. He’s uncertain what it is he’s looking for, but he is sure it's in here.

He walks through shelves and aisles to a collection of cardboard boxes he still sees in his dreams. They taste just the same as seven years ago, as seventy minutes ago. He marvels that he could ever mistake the sensation for anything but spirals and antlers and LSD. The tape splits under his pocket knife and he lifts the first lid away. The Dora Lange scene.

He hasn't told Marty about a possible connection between Mater Dei and ‘95. Not yet. He’s still not sure there is one. When he takes this to Marty, if he wants to get anywhere but shut down, he has to have something real.

He reckons that’s why they’ve worked so well together for so long. Marty is practical, but he’s not willfully incompetent like the rest of the squad. He recognizes when it’s time to go out on one of Rust’s limbs and he's willing to defend Rust and his “conspiracy theories” to Salter when necessary. And he’s good about not letting Rust have enough rope to hang himself with, the heretofore theme of his damn life.

He sifts through the contents of the box with gentle hands, letting his fingers linger on the apex of a bird trap. After a time, he decides that whatever he wants isn’t in this box and reaches for the next.

It’s a good twenty minutes before he comes across it, tucked into one of several boxes packed with the contents of the Ledoux cookhouse. It’s a thin leather-bound book, the cover embossed with a salamander. Antique by the looks of it. The title is an illegible scrawl of glyphs. He’s surprised to find the pages written in English when he flips it open.

There’s no title page or publisher information, not even an author credit. Simply ‘Act I, Scene I’ followed by the opening lines of a play. He can feel something deep and dark yawning behind the innocuous verse and he knows.

“When shall we three meet again?” he murmurs as he snaps the cover shut. He shoves the volume into his waistband as he stands, then begins setting everything back to rights.

Back in the light of day, Rust is forced to question his own motivations. In truth, he doesn’t know why he took it from the evidence locker. He hadn’t read more than a few words on the first page before deciding it was what he’d come looking for. He can’t even say for sure why he thought there was something in evidence instead of the file room. Reviewing notes and paperwork has always been his first instinct, from robbery to narcotics to homicide. He doesn’t know why he’s hiding it like a thief instead of signing it out, either. Or why he didn’t read the damn thing right on the spot.

It’s stupid. Risky. And stealing trophies of past cases won’t help keep him out of the psych ward when Marty tires of his shit and commits him. But, inexplicable or not, it's right. He'll concede to Marty's opinion of his mental state any day. But on this? The job? He leaves every cop in the state in the dust, and there's not an asshole in this building who doesn't know it.

Marty strives to drag his attention back to the here and now with some garbage narrative based on a gross misunderstanding of MPI. It’s the constant drumming on his small back that forces him back to the present, though. “S’like mass hysteria, right? Shots fired at the spooky old church. People expect there to be a body, so they see a body. Maya Davis sees an opportunity to get rid of an ex. And we’re sitting here playing riddle me this like a couple of idiots.”

Rust’s thoughts circle the 911 transcripts like a rogue planet locked in a suicide orbit. “That’s not how mass hysteria works, Marty.” He needs to move. He needs to work. He needs to stop thinking about salamanders and poison fruit. He stands and grabs his jacket, gesturing to Marty with his chin. “C’mon. I wanna see this church again.” Marty rolls his eyes, but he comes easily enough.

***

Rust lights a cigarette as soon as they hit the open air and falls back. He seems content to let Marty take the lead now that he’s gotten what he wanted, the little shit. “So enlighten me. How does it work? Mass hysteria?”

Rust doesn’t immediately respond. After all these years, Marty knows that this is SOP instead of a refusal to answer. Rust is a good teacher when he doesn’t get it into his head to lecture; deliberate and tolerant. He likes a minute to gather his thoughts is all, slow-talking cowboy philosopher that he is. Patience is a virtue when dealing with Rustin Cohle.

They slide into the Crown Vic and Rust takes a long draw from his Camel, settling in with a satisfied hiss. They’re halfway out of the parking lot before he starts to speak.

“Mass psychogenic illness," he sighs through a cloud of smoke. "It functions like an epidemic but spreads too fast. One person starts exhibiting symptoms once exposed to a trigger, and the domino effect takes hold. The symptoms spread to others via sight or sound, and they’re instantly severe. Once it runs its course, everyone affected recovers completely. Like it never happened.”

Marty nods. The explanation sounds pretty close to what he’d imagined. “Okay. So our symptom here was a hallucination.”

Rust shakes his head, sparing Marty a quick glance before returning to his study of the scenery. “No. Illness is the operative word. We’re talking symptoms like vomiting, weakness, fainting, headaches... It can be mistaken for terrorism. Biological or chemical agents. Toxic exposure.” He shrugs. “It’s a true epidemiological event. In my experience, hallucinations are deeply personal.”

“Your experience is pretty vast,” Marty allows with a straight face.

Rust doesn’t dignify that by looking over, but Marty sees his lips twitch just the same. “They can’t be replicated and passed from individual to individual. Four people, three in separate houses, one on the street, all called in gunshots and screams. Same location. Same time. You ever hear of four fucking calls for anything less than a riot? Two of those calls reported a seeing man on the ground. Another reported seeing suspects fleeing the scene. You read the transcripts, man. You listened to the same audio as me.

“Then, Maya Davis turns up, tells a story that slots right in with the calls. She has specifics on the victim and the shooter. She looks like every other witness of violent crime we’ve ever talked to: like she's deciding between therapy or a drug habit. If you get that Beaumont kid in a room, I’ll have the same story out of him in fifteen minutes. The whole fucking thing should be open and shut.”

“Sure, Rust. Except for the fact that there is no body.” He catches Rust’s patented ‘I don’t have a vocabulary small enough to explain this to you’ face out of the corner of his eye. “There’s not even a crime scene!”

“Pretty sure that’s where we’re headed right now, Martin.”

“A stray bullet casing does not a crime scene make. Shit, you’re from Texas, you know that better than I do.” They subside into grumpy silence.

The tense quiet is a familiar waiting game between them and Marty’s always hated those. But he worked interrogations long before he ever met Rust. He knows a thing or two about letting a suspect marinate. Anyway, Rust never fails to break first. Marty reckons it’s because Rust is clinically incapable of shutting the fuck up.

It takes a few more miles than he expected, but patience pays off. Ten minutes later, a slow, easy drawl ventures an olive branch from the passenger seat. “It was pretty convenient, how the fire alarm got pulled while Salter was bawling us out in the office.”

Marty can’t suppress his smile. He never did much care for that Deputy Dudley Do-Right motherfucker over in Acadia. Besides, better to call in favor than watch Leroy burst an artery trying to lecture Rust on the finer points of personal interactions. “Got pulled? Huh. Sure was lucky how that worked out.”

The rest of the ride to Mater Dei is an information exchange. Marty shares that Lydia’s next of kin have been notified and they’d immediately pointed fingers at Roger Fox. Likewise, there’s still no hits on the Attempt To Locate they’d issued for Billy or Roger.

They discuss on and off what Rust unearthed in the archive regarding their “suspect” and “victim.” They still have no body. Not even a missing person matching the apparent victim. So what Francis Beaumont is suspected of is still up for debate. And, fuck, thinking in qualifiers like that makes Marty want to find whoever sent this case up the line instead of killing it and knock their teeth in. Like state detectives have nothing better to do.

When they arrive at Mater Dei, Marty thinks once again that it’s pretty goddamn obvious nothing happened here. The place is set on a well cared for residential street, for all that it's on the lower end of the economic scale. It puts him in mind of where he grew up. He’ll never understand that ‘shabby chic’ shit the yuppies are so crazy about. Marty’s momma would’ve sooner starved a week to pay for paint than let the windowsills peel. A place like this? Nobody is meeting here under cover of darkness to do any kind of shady business. Shit, the neighbor kids ain’t even thrown rocks through the windows.

Rust is halfway across the lawn before Marty even finishes getting out of the car. The man never did have the good sense to be lazy. Laurie must not be wearing him out at night. Marty’s expression sours and he slams the door a bit harder than necessary. He’s definitely not thinking about how long it’s been since Maggie wore him out.

He stretches his legs and catches up to where Rust is standing. A casual inspection of the steps leading to the side door of Mater Dei reveals nothing. “Well?”

Rust purses his lips and takes the first step up. “Davis, Beaumont, and their little friends were sitting here, smoking up.” He shakes his head. “Waste of grass. They could’ve just gone inside and hotboxed in the confessional.”

And that’s a hell of a visual: Rust stoned and drawling philosophy at some poor captive priest on the other side of a screen. Marty laughs, sharp and short. “We come here so you could lecture on proper smoking technique?” Rust ignores him in typical fashion. “Anyhow, no, they couldn’t. Davis said she’d seen the caretaker here before. They thought someone was in there.” Rust shoots him a look that asks ‘then what the fuck were they doing here?’ Which is a fair question.

In lieu of admitting that, Marty offers what even he can admit is a stupid explanation. “Mighta been a squatter.”

Rust mounts the steps and shoves open door. “Awful clean in here for a squat,” he calls over his shoulder.

Marty trails after, pausing in the doorway to let his eyes adjust to the dark. Rust is headed for the altar, climbing the dais, and Marty wanders down the aisle. The pews are spotless, save for dust. No graffiti to speak of on the walls. No bottles. No needles. No garbage. The big marble font rests uncracked and near glowing in the dim light. For a moment, Marty swears that there’s still water in it. Then it resolves into a rippling spiral pattern carved into the bottom of the bowl. He still has to resist the urge to dip his fingers just to check.

Rust is right. It’s too clean for a squat. Hell, it’s too clean for an abandoned building. “Maybe there was a caretaker,” he says, loud enough to echo up the aisle to Rust. There’s no acknowledgment and when he looks, Rust is standing stock still behind the altar. Normally, Rust is a hard man to read, but even from this distance, Marty clocks the tension in his stance.

He’s seeing something. For the second time in a day.

Marty makes up his mind to grill Maggie about drug-related brain damage when she gets off shift tonight. He turns away from the font and strides with purpose to his partner. Rust hasn’t moved and now Marty can track his gaze to an open, empty cupboard/shrine thing. He doesn’t know a whole lot about Catholic rites, but he can see from how it’s situated, draped over with velvet and flanked by red lamps, that it’s important. Rust stands hypnotized.

Marty doesn’t reach out to him or even get too close. He’s seen Rust in action and he reckons Rust could probably kick his ass by accident if spooked. Of course, he’ll die before he admits that out loud. “Didja hear me? I said you were right,” he says, firm and even.

A beat. And another. “Usually am,” comes the stilted response. Right words, wrong delivery.

“Alright. Pack it in,” Marty declares with half a mind to drag Rust to the ER. He knows he won’t, though. Of course, he won’t. It would ruin Rust’s career. “We’re done here.”

Rust’s head comes up and his sides heave like a blown horse. He looks over and blinks slow, a man trying to clear his vision if Marty’s ever seen one. “No. We ain’t.”

“Exactly how stupid do you think I am?” Marty demands with far more patience than the stubborn ass in front of him deserves.

“Marty-“

“Whatever the hell was wrong with you earlier isn’t done with you, yet. More vortexes?” Rust stares back, stone-faced. “Jesus, Rust! The fuck are we doin’ here right now? Wasting our time with this bullshit case. You shouldn’t be out in the field like this!”

“Like what?” Rust asks, intimate and reasonable. His box voice. Fuck him. Now, Marty is pissed. “If I shouldn’t be out like this, I shouldn’t be out. ‘Like this’ is my normal state of affairs. Only the severity varies.”

“That’s just insulting, you thinking you’re gonna talk rings around me with that weak shit. Like I ain’t known you seven goddamn years. A difference in severity.” Marty feels his face twisting into a snarl. “Like either a cold keeps you out of the field, or pneumonia doesn’t. Christ, Rust. Even you don’t believe that.”

“Marty-“

“Rust,” Marty growls. His poor, frayed patience finally gives out. “Get in the fucking car.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title courtesy of Hugo's '99 Problems':  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQp0B94HPcE 
> 
> "When shall we three meet again?" is the first line of Hamlet. I almost went with the first line of Romeo and Juliet because it ends up in dead kids, but then I thought that was unnecessarily goth of me.


	3. Let the People Know My Wisdom and Fill the Land With Smoke

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This story is hunting me through the streets like a dog. So as a birthday present to myself and a solstice gift to you, I present:  
> Marty lays the smackdown, Rust is his own worst enemy, and nobody knows how to feel feelings

“Where the fuck are we goin’?” Rust growls when Marty sails right past their route to headquarters.

“I’m taking you home, asshole. You’re not fit to be seen in public, let alone be on the job.”

“My truck is at the station. My files-“

“First, if you think I’m letting you drive after that show in the church, you’re crazier than I thought. Second, you ain’t gonna need your files ‘cause I’m dumping this case the second I see the major,” Marty interrupts, amped up and hyper-aware of Rust.

Even with eyes locked on the road, every so often he sees Rust carefully ignore something Marty can’t see. He hates it. He hates the helplessness and guilt that falls like a hammer blow with Rust’s every twitch.

Resolving the Lange case is not why Rust closes his eyes and clutches the oh-shit bar, bracing for an impact that isn't coming. Rust fried his brain long before he ever met Marty. (But going back to the bikers sure didn’t help, did it?) The way they ended up getting the Ledouxes is not on Marty alone, either. He and Rust are _partners_. (But Marty didn’t try to talk Rust around all that hard, did he?) It's not like Rust isn’t a grown-ass man who can make his own decisions. God knows, he is. (But Rust is also a damaged lunatic whose decisions tend to favor that death wish of his. Marty knew it in ‘95 as sure as he knows it now, didn’t he?) Rust’s special brand of crazy is nothing Marty has to feel responsible for. (Isn’t it, though?)

“It’s nothing but a ghost story,” he tells the windshield, voice gruff and guiltless. “There was no crime. There is no scene. There is. No. Case.”

“Fuck you, Marty,” Rust snarls, more animated than he’s been for a good thirty minutes. “We ain’t even had it twenty-four hours! You can’t just-“

“Oh, baby, yes, I can. Y’see, I’m still the senior detective, here.”

“You are that, sergeant,” Rust agrees, seething. And that’s dirty pool. It’s not Marty’s fault Quesada stalled Rust’s career for six years. Maybe, if Rust had dialed back his deep and confusing hatred of authority, he wouldn’t have had to wait for Quesada to retire before making First Class.

In any case, Marty shrugs off the jab. He can afford to be generous in victory. They both know he has Rust against the wall here and there is nothing the other man can do about it. “Me an’ Audrey will drop your truck off tonight.” _That_ gets a look out of Rust. “Sure, she hates me, but she likes you. And what sixteen year old is gonna turn down the chance to drive?”

Rust lets out a breath, slow and even, the fight draining out of him like it never was. “I was there takin’ cover with Macy when you and Maggie were teachin’ her to drive. You gonna trust her at the wheel over me?” he asks, voice so dry Marty suddenly needs a beer.

The mood switch startles a laugh out of him, though he doesn’t know why. Rust’s always been more unpredictable than a DIY meth lab. “Mmm. Most days it’s a toss-up between the two of you, but I haven’t seen her do anything batshit this week. So she’s in the lead, right now.”

When they pull up to Rust’s building, Marty grabs his elbow, a little rougher than he intended, before he can get out. “You gonna be okay, man?”

Rust shoots him an exasperated look. “We doin’ this again? I’ve been telling you all day that I’m-“

“I’m serious, Rust. I haven’t seen you this fucked up since...” He trails off. Both of them are well aware that the last time he’d seen Rust like this, there had been a 'hood war, several grams of cocaine, and at least two murders involved. He catches and holds Rust’s gaze for a moment. “Call Laurie.”

Rust twists his mouth into a grimace and finishes climbing out of the car, but he doesn’t close the door in Marty’s face. Instead, he produces a cigarette from thin air and Marty watches the cherry wobble between his lips as he speaks. “She’s expecting me tonight, anyway,” he sighs, like it’s some kind of painful concession. “Drop the truck off. I’ll call for a cab.” Marty keeps staring at him. “Oh, for fuck’s sake! What d’you want? A pinky promise?”

He rolls his eyes to the sky. “Shit,” he huffs, his drawl adding an extra syllable to the word. He looks back a Marty, teeth clenched around the coffin nail like it might try to escape. “The keys are in my desk. Get on out of here, Marty. Go and tell Leroy we can’t do our goddamn job.” Orders delivered, Rust shuts the door and ambles to his apartment. Marty takes care not to watch him jimmy the lock. Some things are safer left in the hazy shadow of plausible deniability. Despite not watching, he doesn’t drive away until Rust flips him off and slams the front door behind himself.

*******

Rust is a patient man. But he’s a curious one, too. It’s what makes him a good detective. When his two singular virtues fight it out, he's a 'rather be sorry than safe' kind of guy. Rust lays the little book on the mattress with shaking hands, a victim of his own curiosity. Again.

Its cover is no worse for wear, despite having spent the better part of two hours pressed between his belt and spine. It doesn’t show the least sign of being subjected to the vice grip of his sweating fingers as he’d read word after word and ruined his goddamn life. Again.

He wants to throw it, crack its spine, tear its pages out. But Rust knows that’s only lizard brain anger shielding all too human fear. There’s no point in raging at an inanimate object. Its nature is fixed; immutable in a way that, every so often, makes him a little jealous. There is no productive end in punishing a book. But he does hope the playwright died screaming.

He peels himself up and staggers to what amounts to his liquor cabinet. It’s just a few bottles left over from the bad old days, so he can prove to himself he doesn’t need to open them anymore. Marty had laughed and made a joke about meditation. Laurie had laughed and made a joke about masochism.

Rust laughs, but the joke is on him and no one else thinks it's funny. His trembling hand hovers for a moment over a bottle before he turns away and settles for a glass of water. He elects to slide down the nearest wall rather than try to walk back to the mattress. He’s not sure he could find it again in the fog. Dense as it is, there’s no telling what could be lurking in it. Safer to have a wall at his back.

It’s then that the smell hits him. The fog reeks sweet and vile like rancid vegetation. He gags and scrambles for the garbage can. Stomach empty, he settles back against the wall, wrung out and sweating. He keeps the can nearby and drinks his water.

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread, he reflects. _The King in Yellow_ rides the ragged edge of comprehension. Where Rust quails, inbred backwoods yokels like the Ledouxes had thrown open their arms. It doesn’t surprise him in the least, what they did with the _King’s_ lessons.

The fog wavers as shadows begin moving through it. Rust watches them for several minutes, disquieted. They move wrong and they’re too tall, but he can’t say for sure that they aren’t human. What he can say is that he didn’t invite them, so they can entertain themselves. He focuses on not puking again. It takes more effort than it should.

Christ. Those white trash yahoos never should’ve had it, though. He’d done his due diligence. The play lying on a fog-shrouded mattress somewhere is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to any private university in the lower forty-eight. The amount of legislation involving the fucking thing is astonishing. _The King in Yellow_ is banned in dozens of countries, including the entire European Union. The US itself prohibits any kind of print run. It’s an act of treason to import it. Every copy any government body ever found has been reported as destroyed. There is only one publicly acknowledged copy, and it's tucked away in the archive at Arkham University in Massachusetts. Getting access to it requires three acts of God and the sort of waivers usually associated with skydiving.

 _The King in Yellow_ has been linked to more suicides than Christmas. Hundreds of murders have been attributed to it. It has packed asylums and kept psychiatrists in business for two centuries, according to legend. It's a hell of a reputation to be based on pure bullshit alone.

On the black market, the bids would _start_ at seven figures. If Rust didn’t think he’d be killed on sight, he could take the wretched thing to the cartelistas and name his price. Fuck, El Chapo would give him half of Mexico for it.

And, here it was, fallen right into his lap. So, he read it. Of course, he did. What else could he do?

One of the inhuman shadows tops up his glass with crystal clear water. Maybe they’re not so bad, for apartment crashers. He grunts his thanks and takes a drink. Tastes like seaweed but, shit, he's thirsty.

His own impulse control aside, reading the play in full has made one thing very clear. Men like Joaquin Guzmán, men like the Ledouxes, are the last people who should have something like _The King in Yellow_. Where the fuck did they even get it? Rust drains the glass.

Somewhere in all this musing, the fog dissolves and leaves behind a single figure. Human, at least. White. A big man. Taller than himself. Broader than Marty. He has the runic insignia of the Schutzstaffel beat into his neck with prison ink. His blond beard is smeared with gore leaked from where half his face has been blown away. “Time is a flat circle,” he whispers to Rust, maggots mindlessly feeding on the grey matter and tissues that the gun of a vengeful man has exposed. “You’ll do this again.”

Rust blinks and he’s alone in his empty apartment, just the rotten green smell for company. He stares at his bleak white walls, ignoring the black holes crowding the edges of his vision and invading his mouth. He doesn’t bother indulging in regret. There is no warning he could have been given. There's no reasoning he would have accepted. There is no universe in which Rustin Cohle doesn’t read _The King in Yellow_ when given the opportunity. He knows himself too well to think otherwise.

“ _Strange is the night where black stars rise,_ ” he whispers to himself, finding a weird, almost lyrical cadence. “ _And strange moons circle through the skies._ ”

He sits there until his watch goes off, reminding him to call the coroner and try to coerce an early ID on the adult male out of Dicillo. Instead, he thinks about Reggie Ledoux. He supposes that Reggie had prophesied as he knelt in the sun-baked dirt, unknowingly waiting for Marty’s bullet.

_You’re in Carcosa, now._

Rust wonders whether Ledoux was sophisticated enough to know the curse for what it was. To touch eternity, even fractionally, is to experience it in totality and perpetuity. Forever and ever, amen. Once you enter Carcosa, you have always been there and you always will be.

After a minute (an hour? Time is an illusion,) Rust peels off his vomit stained clothes and drags himself into the shower. He’s not sure when he puked on himself, or why the fuck it looks like half-rotten spinach. He feels like too much shit to think about it too hard, though.

Once cleaned and approaching decent, he calls for a cab, eyes drifting to the innocuous volume on the mattress as he speaks. It’s too dangerous to leave in a shit hole secured with a lock that can be forced open with a credit card. But taking it isn’t an option. Rust is a broken man and he knows it. Anything reading _The King in Yellow_ may have done to his already questionable sanity is rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic at most.

Laurie, though. Beautiful, brilliant Laurie. She would try to bear this with him. For him. But suffering shared is _not_ halved. It only multiplies exponentially. It creates a feedback loop of cascading failures and agony until there’s nothing left but a smoking crater where two people once stood.

After a moment of thought, he strides over and shoves the damn book under the mattress slab. The reek of decaying swamp still permeates everything, so he turns on his heel to wait for his cab outside.

*******

Marty hadn’t counted on it being this easy. It seems that Salter is content to let Mater Dei rot in cold case purgatory now that he and Rust had a real case to work on. And all it had taken was five corpses. “Where’s Cohle?” Leroy asks like he's only just noticed Marty’s partner is missing. His eyes scan the bullpen, looking for six feet of nicotine and sour disposition.

“Bein’ an overachiever,” Marty lies, mustering annoyance he doesn’t feel. “Went to talk to a few CIs before putting the final nail in this mess.” He rolls his eyes and shakes his head in defeat. “Left him to it. Not enough hours in the day to lock horns with him over this shit. Easier to let him wear himself out.” He chuffs a wry laugh and butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.

Salter nods, expression somewhere between pitying and relief. Rust doesn’t give a single shit about his reputation beyond being considered competent. But goddamn if it don’t irritate Marty sometimes, the way the rest of CID treats him. Like Rust is a leper until one or another of them needs to salvage a case. Like Marty is bearing up under incredible suffering. Like any of them know the first fucking thing about any of it.

Marty cracks his good ol’ boy grin, and Salter dismisses him not too long after. He sees Demma staring out into the parking lot and he’s grateful he already moved Rust’s truck a few blocks over. The last thing they need is for the B Team to catch a clue and start poking at places better left alone.

The second it crosses his mind, he feels bad for thinking like that about fellow detectives. They’re good men, and they do good work. That superiority shit all Rust’s influence. There _are_ days when Marty comes close to sympathizing with Rust’s cynicism, but that’s usually after dealing with Steve for an extended period.

He spends the next few hours tying everything off in a bow, glad to see the ass-end of Mater Dei. With a stretch and a groan, he stands and grabs his jacket and Rust’s bag, bidding Cathleen good night. He considers calling Rust on the way home; let him know he’s gonna grab Audrey and the truck, but he figures Rust’ll work it out when they turn up. If he’s not already at Laurie’s.

He walks into the house and is surprised at the quiet until he remembers that Macy has some sort of club on Thursdays. He drops his keys on the side table and wanders upstairs. “Hey, Audrey? Darlin’?”

A pretty blonde head pokes out from a doorway, heavily lined eyes none too glad to see him. “Yeah?”

Jesus, as if he hadn’t gotten enough attitude from Rust today. “Was wondering if you’d condescend to do me and Rust a favor. His truck is at headquarters and I was thinking you could go with me and drive it back for him.”

Audrey steps into the hallway and gives him the same assessing look that he’s gotten from Maggie for some twenty years. “If his truck is there, where is he?” She squints and then studies him closer. “Is he okay? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. He’s...Rust.” Marty waves away her concern, though he is pleased to receive it. Good to know she still cares. “I dropped him off at his, earlier. He wasn’t up to driving, is all. Think you can see your way to helpin’ us?”

She stares a moment longer before nodding. “I- yeah. Let’s go.” She follows him to the front door, pausing only long enough to put on her shoes. He leads the way to the car and idles as he waits for her to buckle up. Hand behind her headrest, he starts backing out. “Thanks, hon. He’ll appreciate it.”

“It’s fine,” she answers, voice slow with whatever's on her mind. He decides to wait her out, see if she’ll share it on her own. She does. “You said you dropped Rust home early. And he couldn’t drive. Is he hurt? Sick?”

Shit. He knows he should’ve prepared an answer because there was no way she wasn’t going to ask, but somehow, he’s still flat-footed. “Naw, it’s...” _-just that Rust was under deep cover as a gangbanger and he pumped himself with so many drugs that he permanently scrambled his brain._ “...You know how people sometimes...” - _are so warped and ruined by life that their only choice is to poison themselves until they go bug fuck bonkers or die?_

He growls at himself, annoyed. He can’t decide if he’s trying to protect Audrey or Rust. Both. He considers telling her not to worry about it and turn on the radio, but she’s watching him. She’s interested in his answer and patiently waiting for him to spit it out. She doesn’t look pissed off or disappointed. God, he’s missed that. He sighs, decision already made. Rust’s a big boy, he doesn’t need Marty’s protection.

Better off to skip the tangled web of drug trauma. He barely understands that shit himself. It’ll just open a new can of worms, anyhow. And he suspects there was another major factor in this whole shit show. Cases with kids are tough on everyone, no debate there. But a toddler like that? A baby girl? God forbid, but Marty doubts he’d be limited to seeing swirls and zoning out if… Well, he figures Rust’s reaction today was pretty fucking tame, all told. “Listen, Audrey. This? Stays in the car. You got it?”

He looks over to judge her reaction. She nods fast and earnest, and he’s not surprised. All three Hart women have an odd fondness for Rust despite the man’s best efforts to the contrary. It's got to be that Texas drawl of his. Women are crazy for a cowboy.

Audrey is staring, waiting anxiously. With a deep breath, he throws his partner under the bus for the sake of his relationship with his daughter.

“Rust...has seen some bad things in his day. We both have." Marty shakes his head against the image of two boys curled around each other in a bed, eyes closed and expressions so serene they could almost be asleep. “Sometimes, for Rust, it’s like he’s seeing them again, if he gets reminded, uh, in the right way on the right day.” He risks a glance over at Audrey, not at all certain he got his meaning across.

Maggie would know what it was called, anymore. The only words Marty has for this are his father’s, and he doesn’t like them much. His old man had served in Korea and “operational exhaustion” was what he’d sneered about men like Rust. He’d also used words like coward and pansy. And Marty had believed him. Until he learned better, that is. In any case, the phrase is so bloodless it's almost funny, in the face of what he knows of Rust and the things that haunt him. It feels almost disrespectful.

His half-assed explanation seems to have done the trick, though. Audrey’s eyes are wide with dawning understanding. “Oh,” she says, at last, sounding a little breathless. “I remember. He said… At dinner, the first time, he said that he…” She swallows. “That he’d shot people.” He sees her eyes flicker in his periphery as she thinks. “So, today, he… Like- like he had a panic attack? Because of…” She clears her throat. “Makes sense, I mean. You guys are homicide detectives.” Her words are halting like she’s dragging them up from her gut. “I guess I- I guess I never really thought about what that… What seeing that stuff might do to someone.” She clears her throat, and he feels the weight of her eyes on his cheek. “But, he’s alright? You took care of him?”

“S’pose I did,” he admits, uncomfortable with the way she says it. She makes it sound like Marty had tucked Rust in with a bowl of soup, instead of taking him hostage and stranding him for his own good. At the next red light, he turns to meet her eyes- his eyes, set in a delicate face. She looks confused and sad. The same expression she'd worn when Marty had to explain that big girls have to sleep in their own beds. And suddenly, he regrets the whole conversation. He feels like he just told her Clint Eastwood cries himself to sleep every night. Or that Neil Armstrong watches Hallmark movies with a gallon of ice cream in his lap. The light changes and he looks away, glad for an excuse.

When she speaks again, her voice is gentle as velvet. “Dad?” The word is so fragile in her mouth. “Do- does that ever happen to you? Panic attacks and nightmares and things?”

“Me?” Marty scoffs with a twist of a grin. He can’t take it back, can’t unbreak the security he’d just destroyed. But he doesn’t have to let the truth creep in any further and hurt her anymore tonight. “Nah. No. I’m made of sterner stuff than that.”

It’s like time skips a beat and it all goes wrong in the fraction of a second Marty has missed. Audrey’s looking out the window as if she'd been staring there the whole ride. “Audrey-“

She nods to herself. “I guess that makes sense, too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from CCR's Run Through the Jungle:  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbI0cMyyw_M


	4. Interlude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "The gate below opened and shut, and I crept shaking to my door and bolted it, but I knew no bolts, no locks, could keep that creature out who was coming for the Yellow Sign."  
> \- Robert W. Chambers

_Macy isn’t sure what she expected when Lani said she had something to show them after French club, but jewelry hadn’t been it. She holds out her hand and Lani passes it over like she’s in a hurry to get rid of it._

_It’s... pretty. In a creepy sort of way. It’s the kind of thing Audrey’s friends would wear. It’s a pin, she thinks, though the metal needle fixed on the back isn’t sharp at all. The stone itself is glossy black and honey yellow, stacked one on the other like a cake. Small yellow whorls decorate the edges where the black layer is carved away. A large, magic-y symbol is etched into the center of the dark oval. It doesn’t look like anything she’s ever seen. Not a language, anyway. Some of the things she's seen in the books Audrey thinks no one knows about come close, though. The shape reminds her of grasping fingers and the whole thing is less pretty now that she’s thought of it._

_Tara side-eyes Lani. “The way you said it, I thought it was gonna be bad!”_

_“It is,” Lani says, serious as a heart attack. “It’s haunted._

_Tara snorts. “You’re haunted. Don’t be stupid.” Macy doesn’t really believe it either, but she does get a little thrill at the thought._

_“It is!” Lani insists. “It came from an abandoned church. Gina said it used to belong to a guy who got murdered. A serial killer or something.“_

_Tara rolls her eyes but Macy’s gut tightens. It’s definitely not true, though. Audrey is all about true crime and likes to corner Mr. Rust to talk about it. According to him, serial killers are rare and they’re so sensational_ because _they’re rare. Macy feels like if anyone was gonna know, it’s Mr. Rust. And besides... “How d’you murder a serial killer? Isn’t that, like, backwards?”_

_Tara still looks skeptical even as she stops reaching to take the brooch off Macy._

_“He comes looking for it,” Lani continues, ignoring them both. Her voice wobbles in her throat and Macy feels kind of bad for how scared she is._

_“As you do,” Tara murmurs, merciless._

_Macy runs her thumb over the carvings again and again. The lines and curves feel good under the pad of her thumb. There’s something satisfying about tracing them even if the brooch is a little creepy._

_“I’m serious!” Lani looks a half-second away from stomping her feet. “I’ve seen him. His face is all messed up. He was standing outside Gina’s house the other night. Muttering to himself. We could hear it through the window.”_

_Tara doesn’t say anything this time, but Lani glowers at her anyway. Everyone knows Gina doesn’t exactly live in the nicest part of Lafayette. As in, it’s ‘not nice’ enough that Macy isn’t allowed to stay the night. A freak staggering around talking to himself might not be_ super _weird._

_“Oh!” Tara yelps, looking a little too delighted for this to be anything good. “I think I heard this one!” She looks between them excitedly. “Like in Girl Scouts or something. I heard, um, that there’s a spooky house way back in the woods somewhere. And like, there was a shoot out and everything there.” Macy knows this story, too, now that Tara’s brought it up. “Anyway, some high school kids found it and took... I think it was supposed to be a ring from there. And the dude who got all shot up at the house started, like, following them. In mirrors and stuff. So one of the guys who took the ring hid it in a church to make the ghost leave them alone. But he kept being haunted and ended up killing himself.”_

_Lani does not look at all pleased with this addition. “It’s… It’s not the same story,” she denies, swallowing hard. “I mean, this thing isn’t a ring. And you haven't been in Girl Scouts for years. Jimmy Hill and Trey Kincaid only got hold of it a couple weeks ago. They gave it to Gina when the cops started looking around the church they got it from.”_

_“Jimmy hasn’t been in school since Tuesday,” Tara pipes in helpfully, looking cheerful and not at all spooked. “My mom’s here. I’ll see you tomorrow.” She bounces off to her mother’s car and Macy can’t remember why they’re even friends._

_“What a bitch!” she hisses, pulling Lani into a hug. She’s trembling a little, and Macy can’t doubt that Lani saw something that scared her, serial killer ghost or not. “I heard that story before and that’s not how it ended.” This is a bald-faced lie but Lani looks a little less terrified so it doesn’t count as a_ lie _lie. “Anyway, Jimmy cuts all the time. It doesn’t mean anything, except that he’s avoiding Coach Bell,” Macy adds, which is the absolute truth this time._

_Lani still looks like she’s on the verge of tears, though. “Gina hid it in my bag last night. After we saw him,” she whimpers._

_Macy has a moment of thinking her mother is right about girls being the worst, but then her mental Audrey scolds her for giving in to the patriarchy. “She has a crush on Ray, and he’s in my English class. I could ask him to ignore her for a week,” Macy offers, because even anarcho-feminists can have revenge._

_“Would he?”_

_“Yeah, if I invite him over to my house to study. He thinks Audrey is playing hard to get.”_

_“... does Audrey know he’s alive?”_

_“No. And she’d be way more interested if he_ weren’t.”

_This makes Lani crack a smile until she catches sight of the pin in Macy’s hand. “What do I do?” she moans. “I’m scared. Gina won’t take it back and I don’t… what if he finds me?”_

_Macy thinks a bit. “Maybe, we should take it back to the church?” Which, as far as it goes, isn’t a bad solution. But, as Tara had just said, it didn’t work for the last guy. Probably better than hanging onto it, though._

_“How?" Lani's big brown eyes have somehow gotten larger and she's still shaking under Macy's arm. "I don’t know where they got it! Gina never said!”_

_“We’ll ask Trey tomorrow.” Macy's voice cracks a bit. She's striving for calm, here, but Lani’s panic is contagious. “Then, we’ll get my sister to take us. She definitely will, she loves this stuff.”_

_“O-okay,” Lani agrees, but she still looks terrified. “But what if he comes tonight?”_

_Which… is a great question. Lani has always been a little useless in the face of fear and stress, even if she likes to pretend otherwise. She freezes like a rabbit when a teacher so much as looks at her. It’s no wonder how Gina slipped the thing into her bag. To make matters worse, Lani spends most nights in an empty house. Her mother has to work all kinds of crazy hours because of her three jobs. If there_ is _someone looking for this brooch, they’re going to find poor Lani all by herself. “Give it to me,” she says before she even really decides to do it._

_“What?”_

_She’ll have to find a good place to hide it, Dad will definitely have something to say if he sees it. Probably that both his daughters are turning into weirdos. She wasn’t supposed to hear him complaining about Audrey to Mr. Rust after dinner, but she did and she can’t forget it. Mr. Rust had grunted and told Dad that weird was his stock and trade, so why the fuck was he expecting sympathy from him? It wasn't a defense, not really, but it made Macy feel a little better anyway. She hasn’t told Audrey what she heard and she’s not going to- the house is tense enough. And if it hurt Macy this much, then…_

_She takes a deep breath and commits. “Listen, my dad is a cop. If there’s a real guy following this thing around, he’ll take care of it. And if he_ is _a ghost or something, well, my sister’s basically a witch, right?”_

_“You mean it?” Lani looks so grateful, Macy could never take it back without feeling like a monster._

_“Yeah. It’ll be fine, I promise.” She’s not worried at all. Because there's nothing to worry about. Tara was right for all that she was being awful about it. The whole thing is just a ghost story everyone’s using to scare themselves. It’s stupid kid stuff._

_To Macy’s immense relief, she notices two familiar cars idling at the curb. “Look, there’s your mom’s car. And my dad is here too.” She keeps her arm around Lani and guides her into motion. “Nothing’s gonna happen. It’s gonna be okay.”_

_“I- Okay, Macy. Just, I’ll see you tomorrow, right?”_

_“You’ll see me tomorrow,” she promises, shoving the stupid thing out of sight before she moves toward her dad’s car. She kind of hopes Mr. Rust is coming to dinner tonight. Having two cops around couldn't hurt._


	5. Whisper on a Scream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Four lovers, three scenes, two relationships, one night.
> 
> Happy new year, folks!

When Laurie swings open the door, she’s surprised to find her favorite tall drink of water dozing on her couch. She casts an eye out the door again, but no, she didn’t walk past a big ass red truck without noticing. When she turns back around, Rust is standing and trying to blink through the resulting orthostatic hypotension. “You know that only happens because you don’t drink enough water,” she scolds as she closes the door. By the time she does up the locks, Rust’s hands are spanning her waist.

“Welcome home,” comes the sleep rough rumble as he presses a kiss to her hair. Laurie knows he can do better than that and turns in his arms to get a proper hello.

She draws back from his lips after a moment, then thinks better of it and ducks back in to nibble at the corner of his mouth. “I do feel pretty welcome,” she agrees with a smile and one last bite. “When did you get here? And where’s your truck?”

“Couple hours ago. Left early so I thought I’d come keep Schrödinger company.”

A glance shows the cat in question still sprawled along the top of the couch, and he doesn’t seem in any hurry to move. “You left early,” she repeats, suspicious. “And the truck?”

“Did you get the lab techs straightened out?” Rust deflects, so clumsy and out of character that she almost laughs. Brat. It’s pretty cute, though, the way he asks for things in that round about yet brazen way of his. Like he can’t actually stop himself from wanting the things he wants, but he’ll let God strike him dead before he condescends to admitting it. Skittish and proud, that’s her man, alright.

“I did,” she murmurs. “I was able to get another set of samples so we can run the right tests. We did find some anthrax, which is unusual but not terribly exciting otherwise.” She reaches up to rest her fingers in the hollow of his throat, pausing to study him. The muscles around his eyes are tense. Headache, maybe. She presses just below his Adam’s apple firmly enough to draw his attention to the air traveling down his esophagus with each breath. “Okay?”

She feels him swallow against her fingertips. “Yeah.”

“Good.” She presses a kiss to the nearest available bit, which happens to be his chin, then begins. “Where’s the truck, beau?” 

“Probably back at my place, now,” Rust sighs. He manages to sound disinterested even though she can feel his nerves thrumming like a plucked guitar string. “Marty said he would drop it off. Figured on taking a cab to get it in the morning.”

“He’s good to you, even if he is self-centered as a gyroscope,” she hums, soft and low between them, just to see his lips twitch in laughter. “Why did your truck have to be dropped off?”

His eyes slide away as he thinks about how to avoid lying and still protect himself. Laurie isn’t interested in any of that, so she increases the pressure on his throat. All he has to do to relieve it is release her from the circle of his arms and step back. He doesn’t. Some of the tension in his jaw relaxes instead. His eyes return to hers. “My day was...more exciting than yours, I s’pose.”

Any fool can see that’s an understatement but it’s alright. Laurie has never minded pulling teeth when it counts. She rewards him with a small kiss to his jaw. “That’s no good. A case?”

“Yeah. It-” he trails off and hesitates again, but she lets it happen this time. Now that he’s given in and admitted to being human in this singular instance, he’ll follow through. It’s Rust’s nature to articulate himself with careful purpose, stacking and balancing each meticulously chosen word like stones in a cairn. She’ll never begrudge him that. “Triggered some stuff in me. Chemical flashbacks, mostly. Marty sidelined me pretty early. He dropped me at the apartment around three. Said he didn’t want me driving.”

“It must’ve been an intense episode for him to say that.” Especially considering that she knows for a fact that Marty treats impaired driving like a competitive sport. “Are you feeling any better?”

“Intense," he huffs, breath buffeting her face. It smells overwhelmingly like toothpaste. "Yeah. And prolonged. Think I must’ve stopped reacting to him at one point. Marty looked pretty rattled.”

She’ll bet he did and she can’t blame him. Dissociation isn’t a symptom of hallucinogen perception persistence disorder. God alone knows for sure, since Rust would sooner die than sit through a psych battery, but Laurie can think of another disorder that dissociation and depersonalization  _ are _ symptoms of. And she’d lay good money that not all of today’s flashbacks were chemical. 

“Beau,” she says, leaning a little harder on her fingertips, forcing Rust back into his body by the looks of his reaction. His eyes refocus on hers as his throat jumps. “Are you feeling better?” she repeats.

“No,” he admits, voiced grated and eyes going half-mast. “Not really.”

She removes her hand and leans up for a kiss. “I’m proud of you. Now, come help me make dinner.”

***

Maggie finds Marty in the living room, eyes fixed on a bottle of bourbon purchased at least three years ago and somehow still unfinished. It doesn’t make a lot of sense, even to herself, but she’s glad Marty didn’t give up the bottle completely. His restraint is still… Strange to her. Guess she’d spent too much time with Real Cowboy Martin Hart. The idea that someone can change so fundamentally still makes her a little uncomfortable.

“I figured you’d be in bed by now,” she says, announcing her presence and making Marty jump. Out of character, considering he’s got ears like a safecracker. Four weeks ago, he caught Audrey sneaking out because he’d heard her window open from across the hallway and behind two closed doors. In his sleep.

“Oh, hey honey. How was work?” He makes to rise, but she waves him back to the couch.

“Exhausting.” And God, she is tired down to her bones. Some days she gets to thinking she’s too old for trauma nursing anymore. “Nothing special.” She tries to judge her chances of falling asleep in the next twenty minutes and decides they’re slim to none. “I’m gonna fix myself a drink,” she announces, because mounting the stairs to change out of her scrubs is too daunting. “You want one?”

Marty puffs out a breath, licking his teeth the way he does when he’s puzzling something out and it’s not giving an inch. “Could use it, yeah,” he admits.

She pulls out two rocks glasses and pours a finger into each. “That bad?” she murmurs, passing one over and sitting hip to hip with him.

“Not like you’re thinking. We caught something nasty but...” He shakes his head. He takes a sip and laughs into his glass. “Sometimes, I feel like I got two problem children. And neither one of ‘em is Macy.”

She grins, dropping her head against the couch and closing her eyes. “I’m sure Rust would be delighted to hear that.”

“Like I ain’t already told him.”

She can’t help but laugh at that. Their relationship has always intrigued her. Some days, it seemed minute to minute whether or not they would kill each other. It was exhausting just watching them. Yet, here they were, seven years later. Never let it be said that Marty suffers in silence, however. She’s heard plenty of bitching about Rust over that time. And to give Marty some credit, a lot of it was probably legitimate. She likes Rust. She really does, but she can’t say she’d be all that eager to trust her life to someone as inscrutable and combative as Rust Cohle on a daily basis, either. But the one and only time she’d suggested Marty ask for a new partner, he’d looked at her like she’d told him she was putting the kids up for adoption. There just was no figuring. “So which problem child d’you want to talk about first?”

“Neither. Don’t reckon there’s much to say about Audrey, anyhow. I felt like we were really talking for a minute there. And then I fucked it up and we weren’t.”

She knows he tries. He does, but, God, watching the two of them is like watching a slow-motion car crash. From between your own fingers with the bone deep certainty that it was completely avoidable. “How’d you fuck it up?” she asks, wondering if Marty would understand the answer even if he had it.

Which he doesn’t. “I dunno,” he drawls, a little bit of borrowed Texas peeking through that Louisiana twang. “Just- sometimes I think she wants something from me. But she don’t know how to ask for it and I can’t read her well enough to guess.”

“Sounds like Rust,” she observes wryly, turning her head to look at him.

He freezes for several beats. She has the eerie sensation that she’s just revealed something profound. Though even after speaking it, she couldn’t say what was so profound about it. “Huh,” he says. He’s staring at her over the rim of the glass, pole-axed. “Yeah. Guess it does.”

***

“Beau? Rust?” Laurie’s starting to see why Marty didn’t want Rust driving. This isn’t just a migraine. They’re cuddled on the couch together and she turned off the TV a good ten seconds ago. His eyes are fixed on the screen anyway, watching something only he can see.

She snaps her fingers and he jolts. Her position against his chest means she jolts with him. “Yeah. Sorry,” he coughs as he refocuses on her, looking sheepish. “Drifted a bit.”

“I saw that. You wanna tell me where you went? What you’re seeing?” Not that she couldn’t make an educated guess about the latter. Visual distortions like his are well documented. Medical curiosities usually are.

She thinks about the mechanism behind it. He believes it’s brain damage, because of course he does. The idea that the drugs are still in his system somewhere is a theory they both reject out of hand. But Laurie thinks it’s possible that his brain is whole, but rewired. The LSD could have boosted the sensitivities he’d already had, forcing his misaligned synapses into ever stranger configurations. The phencyclidine might have warped Rust’s collection of undiagnosed mental illnesses(a cocktail that almost certainly involves depression) until it became... This.

She doesn't have to make the argument out loud to hear his response.  _ Possible,  _ he'd drawl.  _ Could have. Might have. That's an awful lot of qualifiers, darlin'. _ One of these days she’ll get her hands on the brain of an HPPD patient and they’ll see who’s right.

Her attention falls back to the body beneath her. She purses her lips in displeasure. He’s sitting loose-limbed with his core tensed, the barroom brawler's slouch she remembers from her brothers. He wants a fight. She won't give him one, yet. Matter of fact, with a few tweaks, her plan for the evening ought to take the fight right out of him.

“I get to worrying, sometimes,” he confesses eventually, face haggard but somehow more handsome for it. It always makes her a little crazy, how he wears suffering so well. “About what’s real and what isn’t. And the truth.”

“What’s the truth?”

His body tightens further and he draws a deep breath like he’s about to hit ice-cold water. “Reckon it’s both,” he says, more air than speech. He expels the rest in a single rush. “That’s what I’m worried about.”

***

This is nice. They haven’t had a night like this in awhile. Like two old friends shooting the shit. Like two old lovers just talking to talk. Maggie’s been missing this.

“Let me ask you somethin’,” Marty starts once he’s got two drinks behind him. “Say you had a junkie. Ex-junkie. Been clean a few years, like,” Marty amends and she has no idea where this is going. “Would they… I dunno, would they sometimes act high? Out of nowhere?”

“Act high?” she asks into her glass, trying to work out if this is what he’d been chewing on when she’d come home.

“See things, maybe. Drift out of their heads so far they’re pretty much asleep standin’ up?”

Maggie has made it a policy to never ask about Marty’s work if at all possible, but now she has to know. He won’t tell her directly, even if she asks. Something about cops and confidentiality that she’s never cared enough about to get a solid grasp on. “Criminal informant?” she ventures after a moment.

“Might could be,” he allows, sitting back and taking a slow drink.

“Sounds like a real piece of work.” She chews her lips, trying to marshall the scant information she can recall. “Well. Extensive use of acid can do something like that. I’ve never encountered any cases...” she shrugs one shoulder and lets her sentence trail off. “Users can have flashbacks months or years after their last hit.”

Marty whistles low. “That’s a hell of a side effect.”

“Don’t I know it,” she sighs. They share a meaningful look. If nothing else, she and Marty can always bond over dealing with the consequences of the worst shit idiots do to themselves and other people.

“So, what triggers a flashback like that?” Marty asks after a lingering kiss to the bourbon.

“We don’t know. I’ve heard stress or exhaustion can make it more likely. But then, I’ve heard that it’s alcohol. Then again, it could be that mental illness makes them susceptible,” she lets out a jaded laugh. “Or it might be the drugs used for psychiatric treatment. That’s all old research from the seventies, anyway. Nobody is studying that stuff, now.”

“Treatment?”

“There isn’t any,” she laughs. “Not aside from sedation if they’re violent. Standard procedure for people like that is to treat ‘em and street ‘em. Nobody’s holding on to them long enough to learn anything. We need those beds for actual patients.” Marty is listening closely, a deep frown creasing his handsome features. “We don’t really know anything about them, except that they’re not common. It only happens to the sort of addicts who have been dosing themselves daily with that shit for years. Even then, it’s something like five percent that get flashbacks. A fraction of a fraction. And let me tell you, no one is wasting grant money on something like that.”

Marty’s upset, but she can’t really say why. Maybe he’s already sunk a lot of time into this loser. It’s probably a pain in the ass to make a contact like that and then find out he’s completely useless. “Right,” he sighs. “Why would they blow the money on fixing up junkies?"

***

Laurie stands at the sink, freshening up. The bathroom door is wide open so she can keep an eye on the limp figure in the bed. Moments like this let her imagine that synaesthesia is contagious. She can practically see the blissed out haze Rust is radiating drift through the doorway. Laurie thinks it would taste like taffy. She wonders if he can see her complementary aura, relaxed and delighted, and what it tastes like.

She shuts off the water after a last splash to her face, then returns to the bed and slides up behind him. She entangles their legs as she reaches around to massage Rust’s wrists.

“You okay?” she asks. It seems like Rust isn’t ready to speak, yet, but he huffs a contented sigh which she takes as answer enough. “Good,” she murmurs, dropping kisses on the terrible farmer’s tan spanning his shoulders. “That’s good.” She can’t stop herself from teasing him one last time and grins into his scapula. “I love you, Rustin.” He shivers like she knew he would. 

Once, when they were both still breathless and pleasure drunk, he’d confessed the best secret that anyone’s ever told her.  _ "When you say my name- my full name, Rustin. Feels amazin'. Like warm wax rolling down my sternum. " _ Laurie thinks she deserves a medal for not abusing this knowledge.

She strokes his flank like a prized pony before nosing along his spine and settling in. “Go to sleep, beau. I got you.”

***

Having finished her drink, Maggie slams the rest of Marty’s when he passes it over to her. “C’mon. Time for bed,” she declares, hardly wavering at all. She reaches down for him. “You, too.”

“Why?” He laughs. “Need your teddy bear?” Marty flashes her that old crooked grin of his, and it’s tempting but she’s exhausted.

She shakes her head and pulls him up. “You need to sleep if you mean to play with Rust and your new junkie friend tomorrow.”  _ Junkie friend.  _ A new fear is born and sliding right into place with all the others in a split second. She pauses at the foot of the stairs and releases the hand she’d been leading him by. 

She wants to say she implicitly trusts her husband, but that would be a filthy lie. The Marty she thought she married and the one she actually  _ did _ do not line up. And then cheating bastard it turned out she’d married went and became a new fucking man. She doesn't even  _ know _ him, this stranger she's been sharing a house with for six years. She can't trust him or his judgment as far as she could throw him. “He doesn’t know where we live right? Your CI?”

"What?" Marty looks at her like she's being ridiculous and fuck him. Somewhere, outside of the moment, she knows this is the bourbon. Marty has always taken pains to keep his work  _ at  _ work. Hell, he hadn’t brought Rust home until they’d been partnered three months. In all likelihood, this guy doesn’t even know Marty’s first name. She knows that CIs are tools kept at a distance. Some far away fragment of Maggie is fumbling for the off switch, to  _ just stop talking _ . 

She doesn't manage it. But here and now, the old rage and hurt are boiling over and she wants to unleash it. Then a torrent of words come barreling out of her mouth without conscious thought. “People like that are dangerous. They’re capable of anything. They’re like animals. You can't ever trust that you know them. It changes by the second. They lie about everything and they’re only ever out for themselves.”  _ Like you _ , she barely manages to bite back.

“You know the kinds of shit I see all day. I see these junkies at work, too. We have keep tweakers sedated like wild animals. Shit, a nurse in the ER got bit the other night. She’s on leave until they can run a standard battery- there’s no telling what he could have given her. 

“They’re not even animals. They’re- they’re freaks! They scare me like nothing else.”

Marty is staring at her with his mouth wide open, completely dumbfounded. Somewhere deep down, she wishes he would stop her. “I know you would never endanger the girls like that.” It’s a broad swipe, but it lands beautifully and it’s so fucking satisfying to watch. “I know that you’re not bringing any of these sickos to dinner. But I just need to hear it. That he can’t find us even if he wanted to.”

The silence drags on for far too long, and she finally catches up to herself. But it’s too late. She knows she's just pulled a Marty and fucked it all up in the stupidest way possible. “You’re right,” he says finally, expression stony. “I  _ would _ never expose you or the girls to anyone I thought was dangerous. You. This family. This house is as safe as I know how to make it.” His jaw is tight and  _ fuck _ , Maggie will never know why she has to pick fights when she drinks.

“What about you? You’ll be safe? You can’t be alone with him. Promise.” It’s a gambit, playing up her worry for him. When she’s sober, she’ll regret it, but right now she wants to fix what she broke.

“Rust’ll be with me,” he says, eyes looking right through her, like he knows. Fuck him. But the words ring true from his mouth. “Go on. Go to bed, Mags. I’ll be up in a minute. Think I want some water, is all.”

She goes. When a minute, two minutes, twenty minutes pass and she’s still alone in the bedroom, she’s not surprised.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from Kenny Wayne Shepherd’s “Blue On Black.”  
> https://youtu.be/TEqX5CWh7tY


End file.
